by Ron Elliott
Richards said, ‘You think he’s telling the truth.’
The detective interrupted, ‘He’s not.’
‘I think he told the truth about putting out the fire. I think he went under the stage with his girlfriend, Jane. Fooling around.’
Richards said, ‘Because?’
The detective thought fast, putting it together. ‘Why he took so long to put the fire out yet described it in detail.’
Iris watched him turning over the elements of her theory. She let him own it.
He said, ‘Putting his pants back on. Forgot his shoes. Someone else forgot their pantihose. Bagged. Got her out in the confusion.’
‘I think he’s being loyal. He’s probably a bit of a hero.’ She shot a look at Superintendent Richards. ‘On the other hand, I’ve been wrong before.’
The detective said, ‘No, it all adds up. Good detective work, Mrs Foster.’ He actually patted her on the shoulder before striding back towards the boy. ‘Brent, the lady just read your mind. I’m going to whisper what she told me and you can decide how far that secret gets shared.’
Brent did not seem eager.
‘So, stud, you ready to hear our theory?’
Iris started to make her way towards the open doors of the gym, when Richards caught up with her. Iris said, ‘I hope he doesn’t say it in front of his mother.’
‘He won’t. The kid’s going to have to tell her eventually.’
‘He’ll tell his father and leave it to him to pass on.’
‘We’ll hire you for the counselling. Now, can you prepare a bit of a questionnaire for this lot?’ They’d reached the door. Richards pointed to the barely contained mob of students on the oval.
‘I can’t.’
‘Aren’t there multiple choice questions?’
‘Yes. There are. Superintendent, I don’t know whether Brent has helped set the fire, even if he doesn’t fit the profile. It wasn’t profiling that excluded him. Most of what I discovered came from watching and listening. As you know, it’s the pauses. The body language. The little glitches.’
‘You can’t get that from a questionnaire. All right. So give us one day. Stay and help us find who did this.’
‘Superintendent.’ Iris could feel herself pleading, hated herself for the weakness, him for pushing.
The superintendent was studying her.
Iris said, ‘Ask the teachers. Ask for the withdrawn ones. The non-mixers. Also, the secret snickerers, the nerdy ones who are unloved by their fellows yet act as if they have some special secret. The secret may be their intended revenge. Or it might be a secret from their other life on the internet. Or it might just be they are a fourteen year old boy. Because ninety-nine point nine nine nine will have the fantasies. Including their fantasies about girls. Powerful mixed-up thoughts are not bad deeds.’
‘No girls?’
‘Soon, I’m sure. I have no current data, Superintendent. Not my field.’
‘It’s all your field, Iris. Part of your gift. The breadth.’
‘Out. Out. Everyone out now!’ A technician by the stage shouted.
The fire investigators and forensic police tumbled from beneath the stage like angry ants.
Police began shepherding. ‘There are pipes running under the floor. Tanks of chemicals!’
‘Don’t use your phones. No mobiles. Don’t use your phones!’
‘Out now. Out!’
They evacuated with haste rather than panic.
Iris became caught in the crowd on the school sports ground, pushed back onto the oval, watching across the asphalt as a fully suited bomb disposal officer tottered into the gym like a fat child learning to walk. Police continued to herd them further back on the grass.
A couple of officers started poking at a garden delivery truck parked out the front of the gymnasium, possibly looking for a way to move it.
The fire crews were back on full alert, running out their hose lines once more. Moving purposefully, assessing where they might direct the water stream. The station officer signalled for one of the appliances to move back. His hands were up, miming a push-back motion, when he was engulfed in the sudden blossom of explosion.
The gymnasium spread in yellow and orange flame from its base, a billowing golden gush, like a big balloon of water bursting with a whoosh of hot air rushing, followed by the grind of brick splitting.
Someone ordered, ‘Down!’
Schoolkids, police and Iris were dropping, trying to get under the sweet hot air, the brick fragments rushing towards them. A new silence lasted for a good two seconds before new noises came, scattered cries and moans, joined by sirens. Fire alarms started away in the other school buildings, car alarms began calling from all directions. Iris could hear it all through the ringing in her ears. She gazed up over other heads bobbing up to see two fire appliances burning, the school beyond seemingly untouched. They could see more of the school. The gymnasium had gone. A large pile of bricks smoked whitely with no fire.
Iris caught a flash of red flame. She saw Georgina at the upstairs window, fearful on the other side of the security screen. Iris smelled the nasty plastic smell. She recognised the image of the flashback, of the fire at her old practice. She saw Georgina again, her hair on fire, bashing at the locked window screen. Black smoke billowed from the roof. Iris hadn’t moved then. She’d stood watching her secretary burn to death twelve months before. She couldn’t seem to move now. Only bend her head down to look away from the burning fire trucks to her hands, to watch the drops of blood falling on them, dribbling into the grass.
Chapter two
Iris sat on a gurney in a corridor. She could hear a dull murmuring, the occasional moan. A doctor examined a girl in school uniform four or five beds down the corridor. A nurse pushed an empty wheelchair in the other direction. Iris stared at an air-conditioning vent near the ceiling when it whirred. She saw her dead secretary Georgina again. It was the earlier fragment, when her hair was not on fire. It was the moment Iris thought Georgina saw her down in the carpark holding her coffee. In the hospital, Iris smoothed down her skirt. She saw a scratch on one leg. She felt for her temple, touching dried blood, which she supposed meant it wasn’t a deep cut. Her mind jumped to the school, to the station officer trying to get the fire appliances to move back. He was gesturing with his arms up, like surrender. She searched the gurney for her purse but became distracted by the smear of blood on the pillow.
‘The truck,’ said a voice.
‘What?’ Iris looked to the man next to her. He was one of the fire investigators, still dressed in his scene overalls. He sat with his back against the wall in a tiny space between Iris’s gurney and the next.
‘There was something in the truck, a secondary ignition device.’
‘What?’
‘I think he was going to back the truck up to the front doors, when everyone was inside. They open outwards. I think the gas cylinders were for later. I think he wanted a slow fire first, with smoke and kids finding all the doors locked, and only once the heat reached a critical point, did he want the whole thing to go. The truck was a failsafe.’
He was in his mid-fifties, overweight, blotchy, balding on top with longish hair at the back. ‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’
‘I’m sorry, no.’
‘We’ve worked similar cases. You’re the Fire Lady.’
‘No.’
‘Yeah, I heard. Sorry.’
Iris stood, shaky at first, having to hold the gurney. She didn’t want this conversation. They had taken her shoes.
‘They won’t believe me,’ he said. ‘This was him. I found the big zeds down under the stage. I got photographs. They were there, before it all blew.’
‘I need to find my handbag. Get to work.’
He stood up with difficulty, putting all his weight onto one leg, grabbing the gurney. He saw her looking. ‘No, I didn’t get a scratch this time. Old wound. I saw you at the school. I wanted to touch base. Charles Koch. You can call me Chuck.’ H
is hand was out, to shake.
Iris fled down the corridor, where parents were starting to crowd around the lying and walking wounded. Uniformed police were taking statements. Others were sitting in bloodstained clothing. She heard tones of comfort, of teasing, forced laughter. She heard someone say into a phone, ‘The burns victims are being sent to St Clement’s.’
The foyer was crowded. Mostly school students, with nicks and cuts. Others were dazed, distant, sitting in the waiting-room chairs, or three abreast on more gurneys, the side rails down. They’d be in shock. The television sets in the waiting area showed news from the school. Helicopter shots of the two burnt-out appliances next to the hole where the gymnasium had been. They might want to turn those off, thought Iris. It was too soon for perspective. They would need counselling. A program to move them through the trauma, individual enough to allow for the different resilience or frailty of each child’s psychological make-up. They’d all need support, mostly, importantly, from their families. If the fire investigator upstairs was correct, this was not the work of a group of sick kids, which would mean less self-blame. On the other hand, the human mind did not cope well with the random. Until the cause could be discovered and fixed, fear was natural. The mind would try to find ways to connect selected dots. The human mind craved the comforts of cause and effect because it suggested the world was understandable, controllable and therefore safer next time.
The police at the truck would need more support. If they’d accidently set something off, they would need serious rebuilding. Especially the person who told them to investigate the truck. ‘I thought …’ ‘You thought what?’ Blame. There are no accidents, only gross negligence. Someone would need to be blamed, not merely the perpetrator. An American word, perpetrator. Offender. Transgressor. Killer.
The group of people around the booking area was seven deep. Iris wasn’t getting her purse any time soon. She considered the dried blood on the back of her hands. She thought of Lady Macbeth, the quote about spots, then considered her own mind striving for the distance of irony. The healthy brain could put layers of ideas and points of view between itself and hurtful things. She took a plastic cup of water from amongst many others on a table, taking a sip before splashing some on her hands, wiped them on her grimy skirt.
Iris went out of the foyer past the arrivals, through parents asking an incident officer how to get to their children. Mildly injured people were still being led into the hospital. Ambulances were still arriving. Kids in wheelchairs, with blankets over their legs, answered roaming doctors and nurses. Two soldiers were in the drive, sending off the empty ambulances, the occasional police car, like an aircraft carrier jumping its jets. Another large press pack was being held way back amidst parked cars. A woman reporter, vaguely familiar, called, ‘Iris, what’s happening? Give us a comment.’ Some cameras swung towards her. Someone called, ‘Hey, Fire Lady!’
Iris walked barefooted along the curb of the hospital emergency driveway to the street. Delivery trucks rumbled past. Business folk were purposeful. Shoppers meandered past another line of media vans with satellite uplinks aimed to the sky. She found a taxi. The driver looked Sudanese. Iris didn’t ask him about the traumas of civil war or driving taxis in her country. She explained her plan to pick up money, her spare car keys, a pair of shoes, before heading back to the practice to pick up her car. His eyes flicked to her in the rear-view mirror as he drove. Too much information, thought Iris.
According to the radio, the explosion may have been a gas leak, yet police were questioning students about a possible student link to the fire trap. Early reports suggested that no schoolchildren were badly hurt. There were cuts, bruises, very few broken bones. Nine firefighters were dead and two members of the bomb response unit were missing, presumed perished in the explosion. The question was asked as to why people had gone back into the gymnasium after the first evacuation.
Iris didn’t listen to the answer. They wouldn’t be able to say, yet. She asked that the radio station be changed to something bland without news. She watched lawns being mowed, children being picked up from school. Tradies were packing up. The traffic was building towards peak hour. The local IGA had a special on tomatoes and mangoes.
Iris promised the driver she would not abscond, although he seemed more mollified by her prestigious street address than her assurances. She went round the back to get the spare key from under the pot by the pool. It was nearly four pm according to the oven clock. She wrote a note to Mathew who would have heard about the explosion, but not know her connection. She decided to leave that until later. ‘Retrieving the car. Not working late.’ She added ‘possibly’. She went upstairs to find cash, comfortable shoes, a reasonably stocked handbag. She checked herself in the mirror, deciding she could repair most of her face in the taxi. A headscarf would hide the blood in her hair until she could take a bath. A long bath.
*
There was a parking ticket under the windscreen wiper of her car. Iris left it there. She headed into the practice, thinking she might write up Hannah’s case file.
Downstairs were a couple of smaller consulting rooms, various amenities including a largish conference room, cramped kitchen, clerical office, reception alcove. A lone patient still sat in the waiting room, not one of Iris’s.
Anna, a severe Dutch matron, looked up from reception as Iris tried to creep up the stairs. ‘Iris, you’re here.’
Pamela, who did accounts, watched over her narrow glasses.
‘Good evening ladies,’ said Iris breezily, tramping up the noisy wooden stairs.
‘I’ll let Patricia know,’ Anna called after her.
I wish you wouldn’t, thought Iris.
Mary stood up in her island at the end of the waiting room.
‘Iris!’
‘Mary.’
‘Oh, I’ve just sent the last patient home. Another one is with Gillian. I didn’t know … You were at the school weren’t you?’
‘They wouldn’t let me call. Then I lost my handbag with my phone in it.’
‘Was it awful? Was it just awful?’
‘But here I am, back. Could you unlock my door? My keys were in my bag too.’
‘OMG.’ Mary, in her mid-twenties, sometimes spoke like a tweet. She came around with her spare keys.
‘I know I’ve missed the clients and I’m sure you’ve rearranged things beautifully. I have “thickening letters” to do and I thought I should write up Hannah.’
Mary opened the door. ‘You’ve got a cut, Iris.’
Iris tugged her scarf forward. ‘Only a nick. Not even stitches.’
‘There’s blood on your shirt.’
‘I should have changed. All good, Mary. I don’t need anything. You’re good to go. Night.’ Iris stepped into her room, closing the door, before she flicked on the light. It was not her room. It belonged to Dr Irene Chew, a champion of narrative therapy who was currently on sabbatical interstate, collating newly discovered papers from Michael White’s estate. Dr Chew’s honours degree, doctorate and other qualifications hung on one wall next to an enormous painting of a tranquil sea.
The desk faced the door. Two soft-backed chairs sat before it, one still facing the green couch where Iris had left it in the morning. Behind the couch hung a painting of orange and yellow hibiscus. Irene clearly favoured colourful pictures of neutral representational detail.
In a large, colourful box were children’s toys. During counselling, a child could demonstrate certain things using dolls, and secrets might be told to a teddy bear. There was magic in the box too. Wands, fairies, toy cats could witness private victories or help defend against scary things. A toy dog could be named, borrowed to defend against ‘the problem’, whether it be night terrors or bedwetting or problems with fighting at school.
Iris looked back towards the couch, trying to conjure Donna and Hannah, to return to the morning before 8.55 when the police came for her. She marvelled at the hibiscus painting, how similar the colours were to the moment the gymnasiu
m exploded. Iris imagined the gymnasium superimposed, saw the station officer too, fixed in the frozen time of the painted canvas on the office wall.
That’s how Patricia found her, still standing in the middle of the consulting room, when she entered in a flurry of impatient concern and jasmine scent.
‘Sit,’ commanded Patricia, pointing to the couch.
Iris did, watching Patricia inventory her wounds and dirt.
‘Is your head cut, Iris?’
‘We were very lucky. Firstly they’d moved us all back, quite a long way. Also, there wasn’t much glass. Very few windows. The brick pieces which reached us were all quite small. They’ll need trauma counselling. The schoolkids, especially. I should have stayed at the hospital, I suppose. I could go back. I can talk to the relevant hospital staff.’ Iris tried to get up, but Patricia laid her hand on her shoulder, pushed her back down onto the couch.
Patricia had strong arms, Iris supposed, from the kayaking. She favoured dresses with lots of colour in ethnic themes – African, South American, Australian Indigenous. Iris tried to focus on the Zulu shields rather than the orange.
Patricia sat down at the other end of the couch. ‘So, the doctors have seen you?’
‘Yes,’ lied Iris.
‘Do you want time off?’
‘No.’
‘Counselling. You need to talk about this.’
‘Patricia. It’s nothing. I mean, compared to …’
‘Which is exactly why you should talk about this one. To Frank?’
‘Okay. Yes, good idea.’
Patricia studied her.
Iris smiled.
Patricia patted her hand.
Iris smiled a real smile. She could see Patricia trying to think of a way to chastise her for being a problem, without saying it.
‘When you came to us, Iris,’ she finally began, ‘what was the plan? What was the journey we decided to embark on?’ Patricia was a practising clinical psychologist as well as the manager. Her areas of expertise were relationship counselling and life-potential actualisation.